Property Wars IV - A New House

So, I now officially own a house.

To be 100% honest, the house still belongs to my mortgage lenders, and it will probably stay that way for another 25 years. But these are just details.

Now it will take a while to "decorate" it (we have to buy all the furniture and appliances, and stripping wallpaper will probably have to be my main hobby for the next 2 months ), but it's a nice feeling to know that all the work you invariably put in "property maintenance" is to your own benefit, and not your landlord's. The plan is to move out in 3-4 years, when kids will probably enter the equation, and I hope that, for that time, we'll have added quite a bit of "european" value to our little red-brick terrace.

The only downside is that it will take time, and lots of visits to DIY stores, and discussions about colours and shapes and positions, silly things that invariably become bigger than they are when two stubborn geeks have to debate them. Middle-ageness, here I come!

I need BookMooch points!!!

BookMooch seems to work great, I've already sent two books and am waiting to receive another two, one of which had been on my amazon wishlist for ages. I have already spotted quite a few other gems that I want to mooch, so please people, get an account on BookMooch and request my books! Even better, put them on a wishlist and then "mooch" them from me!

• Dave Taylor - Wicked Cool Shell Scripts
• David Chappell - Java Web Services
• Ian Edginton - Scarlet Traces
• Michael Frayn - Spies
• P.G. Wodehouse - The Jeeves Collection: Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves / The Inimitable Jeeves / Carry On, Jeeves
• Simon Brett - The Torso in the Town (A Fethering Mystery)
• Taichi Yamada - Strangers
• Toby Young - How to Lose Friends and Alienate People
• William Fiennes - The Snow Geese

Gold-plated city

Yesterday the sun was shining so much that I simply didn't want to go home; the sharp evening light is one of many little things I love about the UK. So I was rambling and wandering through the streets of Manchester city centre, when all of a sudden, approaching Albert Square, it struck me that some yellowish old building from the XIX century actually looked like it was made of gold and silver. I realized that this was probably how it was meant to look, when the stones were new and clean and the air composition was different... suddenly, all those tales of magical cities, with busy streets full of merchants trading fortunes, and buildings made of gold and silver, looked strikingly similar to what places like Manchester tried very hard to be.

Nowadays, Utopia is made of glass and metal; the mass-market revolution built its fantasy world from Fritz Lang and pulp sci-fi, where wealth is not measured by storing huge quantities of scarce and ultimately frivolous metals, but in affirming the predominance of human intelligence on the physical world.

Wish I wasn't here

Just one of those days when I wish I could just stay home and crank away some fancy little program, but I have to be at work. "Zombieing" my day out, wasting time on the web. Sigh.

BookMooch

Today, the intrepid soul behind Magnatune launched a new book-sharing site, BookMooch. The idea is that you get to share books for free, using a system of rewards based on a scale of points: you get a point when sending a book (two points from outside the U.S. of A.), and "spend" a point when receiving one. Nice and easy, we'll see how well it works. The guy is technically sound (the site can be translated directly by users, à la wiki, and the main engine is based on consuming the Amazon webservice), and he's business-smart enough to have led an independent DRM-free web music-store for years. As of now, it's experiencing some loading difficulties, probably due to the premature launch (the UI could use some polishing); hopefully they should be fixed soon.

If you are interested and decide to join (it's free!), check out my wishlist, and my inventory (aka the list of books I'm willing to give away).

Fighting Oracle XE 10.2

I spent the night desperately trying to deploy one of our applications on Oracle XE 10.2. The Oracle install was quick and painless (even though I had to basically remove the 9.2 Universal Client previously installed), but our product couldn't even create a simple trigger. I ran all the SQL script I could find in the install directories, modifying all the lines that seemed to trouble Oracle here and there, to no avail... and 3 hours later, I realised that this was Oracle 10.bloody.2.0, while the last version supported by our app is 10.1.0.2. Talk about wasting my life.

Since XE is not available for previous releases, and the Standard Edition is a 600Mb download, and it's 4 AM, i think this operation will be better "performed" tomorrow at the office. I want to cry. Once again, repeat with me: never EVER start any serious activity after 10.30 PM, unless you are paid to do so.

Managing categories and menus in KDE 3.5

Ever felt like you K-Menu organises itself like a drunkard? Here is a little tip to force it to adapt to your wishes.
(Note: this is for a Gentoo install, the directory names might be slightly different on your distribution; play around with "locate" to find the correct ones)

if you create a myname.directory file in /usr/kde/3.5/share/desktop-directories, it will use the parameter Name specified in the file to automatically manage a category. You can then assign that category in the .desktop file of the applications (usually in /usr/share/applications or /usr/share/applnk ). It is reccomended (but not compulsory) to append a "X-" prefix to your category name if it's not one of the official KDE ones.

Once you have the .directory file in place and your .desktop files are properly tagged, you can add a directory to your K-Menu to contain those apps. The system-wide settings for kde menus are in /usr/kde/3.5/etc/xdg/menus. Brand new menus should be added to the "applications-merged" directory, to keep them separate from the standard KDE ones. An example menu file to manage the "database" category is this:

<!DOCTYPE Menu PUBLIC "-//freedesktop//DTD Menu 1.0//EN"
  "http://www.freedesktop.org/standards/menu-spec/1.0/menu.dtd">

<Menu>
        <Menu>
                <Name>Database</Name>
                <Directory>database.directory</Directory>
                <Include>
                        <Category>Database</Category>
                </Include>
        </Menu>
</Menu>

Et voilà, you now have a new submenu that will automatically contain the applications tagged with your custom category. By the way, if you don't like some of the standard menus, the file to modify is "applications.menu".

If you then want to remove some of your pre-existing menu customization (made with the menu editor), the files are in ~/.local/share/desktop-directories e ~/.local/share/applications.

See this post on a kde list for another explanation.

Viva (?) Las Vegas

Selling your soul to huge American financial-software makers has its bonuses. One of them is that, once a year, you get paid to travel to Las Vegas and chill out at a beach party.

The event I'm talking about is my employer's annual "Kick Off" week, where most of the company meet to celebrate the financial year-end results and charge up for the new year. Don't ask me why it's "traditionally" held in Vegas, I suppose it's a standard location for sales conferences. The chosen resort, Mandalay Bay, was plush without being too tacky; what about the "realistic" beach complemented by wave-generating pool, the Shark Reef, and the entertainment area including several posh restaurant and nightclubs. I spent Sunday roasting under Las Vegas' sun, a daiquiri in my hand while floating in one of the pools. I got completely wasted on Tuesday, dancing my life out to 4 AM. Life is hard, isn't it?

But hey, it wasn't just fun, it also was fun. I got to meet several key people, the ones we routinely disparage in our tech-support world (bloody developers and consultants) and the ones we constantly praise (thank god for Chris Barbieri, the most honest and passionate supportguy/consultant/developer/manager/advocate I've ever met). I got to speak my mind to people responsible for making things happen, and who knows, they might even listen. And the feeling of being recognised, the subtle vanity in hearing "so it's you!" before shaking hands, really was nice. In a "global" organization where you have constant contacts with people via impersonal media like email and web-based systems, sometimes it feels like nobody really cares about what you do, even if it's not the case.

I came back from Vegas (that, by the way, is more or less Disneyland + sex + gambling, extremely boring after a week) refreshed.... certainly not by the scorching-hot weather (who had this brilliant idea of creating cities in the desert anyway?), but by the passion and knowledge shown by "our" people, and by a new insight in the software I get to fix. American optimism really brushed on to me, I suppose. Now that I'm back to work, I wonder how long it will be before I go back to my usual Italian fatalism and disillusionment! :)

Retrogaming my way to hell

Retrogaming is for the 70's generation what boat- or plane-modeling is for the baby boomers. You see grown-up men getting all teary-eyed talking about BubbleBobble and Super Mario, and going to great lengths to reproduce their old machines just to play their old games and feel like a kid again.

This to say that I spent the last two nights with a new joypad (I hadn't bought one for myself for 15 years) and several old Amiga games (running thanks to the emulators WinFellow for Windows and E-UAE for Linux). I actually even fell ill by lack of sleep.

These names probably won't say much to non-Amigaers, but I'm having so much fun playing them again, 20 years later, and rediscovering games that were so originally unique and that you could play in 5 second without even looking at the manual once... Kick-Off, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, Arkanoid, Bubble Bobble (ported on Amiga by BT -- yes, British Telecom!), Mousetrap, TestDrive, Barbarian, Ivan Ironman, Turrican (spectacular soundtrack!), Xenon2, Typhoon, Populous... even SimCity (that was born on Amiga first, and then ported to other platforms).
/
Is this a reaction to taking out a mortgage and preparing my wedding?

SOAP is for losers

SOAP is the worst thing happening to "Enterprise Computing" since, uhm, forever. His entirely asynchronous nature makes it idiotic to use it as backend for anything but the most simple of application. Here I am, waiting more than 5 minutes for feedback on a very simple table-based dialog after clicking "OK". The entire operation (changing some basic security settings) will take me more than half an hour. The same application, last year, had a Win32 client in which the exact same operation would never take more than 30 seconds. But now "we" moved to a "web" infrastructure, entirely built on SOAP+CORBA. The UI is now web-based, and when I click "OK", behind the scenes my server talks to another server, pushing loads of XML back and forward, and 9 times out of 10 the browser stalls while waiting for feedback. Nevermind that sometimes the operation fails, sometimes it actually succeeds. Last week, while internally demoing the next release (that should come out in a month) the lead designer tried to execute an action and it failed without giving any errors. The comment? "oh, it seems like she doesn't want to do it right now". And that was it. And now, of course, we lose contracts on performance. Don't say!

Being John Materazzovich

Zinedine Zidane was born in a lower-class family from a bad area of Marseille, from non-French parents.

Marco Materazzi was born in the luxury of a "football family", his father a successful player and then manager in the Italian Serie A.

Zinedine Zidane was born gifted with flexible ankles and delicate feet, making him an almost natural footballer from the age of 12. Some of his goals and gestures will forever be part of football history.

Marco Materazzi was to be known on the Italian pitches for the rude treatment he reserved to the ball and to the opponents' legs.

Zinedine Zidane struggled to be accepted in the professional leagues, because he was "too slow". So he built up his physique like a rugby player, becoming a terrific midfielder. He was playing well with a surprising Bordeaux, but exploded as One of The Greatest Footballers Ever with an infamously "pumped-up" Juventus team (whose medical team was later convicted of cheating anti-doping regulations).

Marco Materazzi struggled to be accepted as a top-flight footballer. He participated in several campaigns with the national Under-21 team, but had to emigrate to Liverpool to get a regular place in a club line-up. In Italy, he was considered a rough player without any class, and supporters of his clubs were usually quite ashamed of him.

Zinedine Zidane won everything with Juventus in a few years. It was discovered in 2006 that the Italian Serie A results were fixed to favour Juventus.

Marco Materazzi played for ages in an Inter Milan club that never managed to win anything, no matter how many stars they bought. It was discovered in 2006 that the Italian Serie A results were fixed to penalise Inter Milan.

Zinedine Zidane earns a lot, from sponsors and advertisers as much as from his team. He is a global icon, a brand. People from the five continents adore him.

Marco Materazzi earns like an average Italian footballer. He would probably go unnoticed while shopping at Tesco. Many "supporters" regularly "boo" him.

Zinedine Zidane won the World Cup in a team composed by a "blessed generation" of wonderful players. He won the Golden Ball for the best European player several times, like his teammate Thierry Henry.

Marco Materazzi won the World Cup in a team of average players, "late bloomers" who struggled to play at all in Serie A. He'll never win any individual trophy.

Zinedine Zidane was begged by the French manager to play in the World Cup.

Marco Materazzi was considered almost unworthy of being capped, and he had to be only a backup for the more gifted Alessandro Nesta. The other central defender, Fabio Cannavaro, played all the time for the entire campaign; it was expected for Nesta to do the same, but he got injured, Materazzi went in, and in less than 5 minutes he had scored a match-breaking goal. He ended up being Italy's top-scorer with two goals, together with striker Luca Toni.

Zinedine Zidane is famous for disappearing from the match for hours, especially when things don't go "according to plan".

Marco Materazzi can't stop running and fighting for a minute, or the striker will be free to score at will.

Zinedine Zidane, last sunday, scored a penalty awarded for a clear dive. He's a quality midfielder.

Marco Materazzi, last sunday, scored in live action, with a powerful header, jumping over a player as strong as Patrick Vieira. He's a defender.

Zinedine Zidane, last sunday, reacted with mindless violence to a standard insult, one that he had probably heard so many times already on the pitches of Marseille, Turin, the entire Europe. He left his team without the natural penalty-taker, a few minutes before going to penalties.

Marco Materazzi pretty much received and dished insults for his entire career, while fighting inside the crowded box, trying to steal the ball from more gifted forwards that took pleasure in humiliating defenders as static as him, or reacting to the unforgiving Italian press. He has made mistakes before, but never while representing his country in the most-watched competition on Earth. Last sunday, he scored an equaliser for his team, "nullified" Thierry Henry as much as possible, and then proceeded to take and score a decisive (as much as unusual, for him) penalty to win the World Cup for his team.

Zinedine Zidane is being publicly "forgiven" for physically assaulting a "brute" defender.

Marco Materazzi will always be condemned for being a "classless" defender.

Post-Euphoric States

To be honest, I feel numb now. Watching Italy winning the World Cup is like living in a dream. 16 years ago, football was everything for me, and when Argentina kicked us out in the semifinal I felt like something inside me was broken... it was one of the first steps in understanding that "Justice Is Not Of This World". From then on, I lived any European or World Cup with the inner certainty that an inevitable defeat, one way or another, would be dished to the Italian team.

But now, 23 players (and a cunning manager) succeeded in breaking that bad spell. They "unbottled" the joyous rage that was rotting inside me since 1990, and I felt the air fizzling with energy for one night.

But then the night passed, and a day, and another night; and now... now what? Everything else seems a bit pointless now, compared to Winning The World Cup and Putting 1990 Right. Also, my well-rehearsed "noir" pose, as the survivor of a thousand (lost) football battles, it's now left without any credibility...

Football hooligan for a night. (Champions of the motherf***ing world!)

The "Sports Cafe" in Manchester is a bad place. Dark, seedy, home to the worst kind of unsportsmanship and hooliganism. The best place to go watch a World Cup final then! Almost an hour before the kickoff, it's already packed. We struggle to find two chairs with a decent view of one of the two big screens, and will spend the night shuffling between that and the smaller TV nearby. The French are almost undetectable, but when BBC shows the "golden goal" steal of Euro 2000, they start to sing and shout. They'll pay for that, oh yes, and in spades. The match starts, the game seems nervous, the teams cautious; it looks like the match with the U.S.A., it will end up being very similar. Then, a useless french winger, one of those players that will never ever score against us, takes a big dive in the penalty box, and gets away with it because Materazzi (that will became Maserati on the radio, the day after) moves in the wrong way. Zidane scores and the French are exstatic, singing louder than ever; I "know" then that we will win 2-1, and I won't be much wrong. Less than 5 minutes and Materazzi, clearly an instrument to some higher will, scores from up in the sky. 1-1 and the French now are stunned. I-TA-LIA, I-TA-LIA, and I even forget that my ex is just a few seats behind me. Two goals in the first 20 minutes, a rare sight in a World Cup final these days. Then the match stalls. We play better on the sides, but Totti is completely out of the game and Toni is too lonely, easy prey for Thuram. We score again, but a passive offside means it's not good. France grows in confidence, we are again overpowered by their singing "allez les bleus" and "zi-zou, zi-zou". The break is time to relieve ourselves from beer, and I've never seen that toilet so packed. The French can't restrain from shouting even when they pee. I am tempted to start a riot. The second half we suffer. Lippi tries to win it, but Del Piero and De Rossi are not effective and our midfield disappears. Zidane warms up and almost scores, but our goalkeeper is simply too good for any player nowadays. He won't be beaten in live action, only from penalties (and an own goal). Extra time is over us, we are tired, the players are tired, the damn French start to gloat thinking about penalties... but then Zidane loses his cool and gets sent off. I shout BOOOOOO as much as I can, what a shameful way to end a wonderful career. The French are silenced, their talisman is gone, they sense fear. They put on the pitch the two players that killed us in 2000, but this time the stars are with us. Trezeguet, who scored the golden goal at Euro 2000, fails the penalty. Del Piero, who missed so many appointments with glory, this time is ice cold. Fabio Grosso, hard-working defender playing for Palermo, gets the responsability on his shoulders like he did in the semifinal, and starts the party. It's all mad then. The french move out, some shaking hands with me, while the italians are jumping and celebrating. "We are the champions" goes on and on again, until Cannavaro grabs the cup and we dance and jump and hug and sing and I really don't know what happens next.

World Cup, World Music, African Weather

My weekend started with World Cup action and ended with World Music bits, with in-between cooking and entertainment courtesy of torrid temperatures (that really reminded me more of Morocco than South Wales). Global warming threatens to make the British weather extremely attractive, that's probably why politicians are getting around the idea of stopping it.
Related Linkage:

• resting under trees is the best way to find God
• you'll find world music, even if you are not looking for it (but too late, it's gone now)
• maybe I should subscribe to this magazine, it's fairly cheap too; check out the Beginners' Guides!
• Glasgow, east of Latin-America; too bad I didn't catch them live
• Zidane has a caipiriñha, some silly Scouser gets sent off, 1982 echoes start to be heard and, of course, the Germans win

One of those days

In Which the Author Proclaims to Feel Bored and Proceeds to Bore his Readers as Well.

A day-long software installation is working in background, and I feel bored.

I had a dream, last night, about a lion with the body of a cow. People were afraid and passed near it pretending not to care, very slowly. A friend (who I knew, but doesn't exist) told me not to worry, that it was easy, just walk slowly and it won't do anything to me. So I tried, but the lion-cow felt my fear and hit me with the side of its head. I was scared.
I don't remember anything else about it, but I suppose it's better to write it down here before I forget. It's quite a rare occasion for me to remember dreams.

Sometimes I think I should try to be creative again... that I should write something, or code something, instead of repeating these semi-mechanical acts of system administration (install some software, use it once or twice, then break it and try to fix it, play a game, repeat). Unfortunately, "being creative" takes so much time, and effort, and it's the easiest thing to procrastinate since it doesn't really stop anything else from getting done. I suspect this might be quite Wrong, in fact.

I built a UI mockup for a little program to manage and assign housekeeping tasks, using Qt Designer (neat tool, after learning a bit about it); this is for the new house I am buying with Cristina... we might end up managing the h.k. rota before we can actually get into the house (mortgage companies and estate agents are parasites). So there's another little python project entering the huge group of Programs I Never Quite Managed To Complete.

Oh, the install has ended. More later, I suppose.

Oh, I still have a blog!

1-2-3-test, test, ah-ah, be-be.